Combatting Hatred in all its Aspects
March 31, 2008 3:14 pm Canadian Politics, Freedom of SpeechJennifer Lynch, QC, Chairman of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, writes as follows in the 2007 Annual Report of the Commission.
“In addition to its role in processing complaints, the Commission has represented the public interest by intervening in hate case hearings before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT). To date, the Tribunal has issued more than 15 decisions in complaints against Canadians connected to hate websites or materials. In all instances the Tribunal has ruled against the respondents and ordered them to close down their websites and pay damages - sending a powerful message of social solidarity to all those targeted by hatred and contempt.
“As effective as section 13 has been, the Commission recognizes that complaints are only one tool of many that must be used to combat hatred in Canadian society. The Commission is continuing to work with civil society organizations and governments towards developing a comprehensive strategy to combat hatred in all its aspects.”
All of which demonstrates that, once the law has created a category of crime, and set up an agency to deal with it, it must seek a broader mandate, because the crime problem is so much vaster than was previously imagined. Parkinson’s Laws are universal. Work expands to fill the time allowed it.
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
Dalwhinnie
truepeers :
Date: March 31, 2008 @ 4:03 pm
This is scary stuff.
What does Madam Lynch mean by “hatred”?
Do you think she has ever stopped to consider that resentment is a universal human phenomenon, inescapable for every one of us, and that while it should be our goal to limit our resentment by various means of transcendence, i.e. not to promote resentments when it can’t be used to productive ends, any attempt to outlaw it is to outlaw the human.
Just as the Nazis could not have seriously expected to banish their resentment of commercial modernity from history by killing all the Jews, once and for all, the Human Rights Commission will keep having to discover “neo-Nazis” once all the Nazis are gone.
(Thus they have today a term in Poland: “antisemitism without Jews”.)
Lynch just shows that a “human rights” commissar is someone who gets to deny her own resentment. This means she cannot be even modestly reflective about the nature of our shared humanity.